by Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY

by Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY

NEW YORK - You've heard it before - the best camera is the one that's always with you, which is why so many people take pictures with their phones. But despite recent advances in smartphone photography, rarely do camera phones stack up against very good stand-alone point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Nokia hopes to dramatically change that perception and reality with the new Nokia Lumia 1020 smartphone from AT&T that I've been testing the past few days. While photo buffs aren't about to trade in their digital SLR for this latest Lumia - nor should they - Nokia's new phone takes impressively detailed pictures. Only when you zoom in close - and zooming is one of the strengths of the 1020 - do you see some grainy images. Simply put, the 1020 is the finest camera that I've used on a cellphone.

Whether you choose to buy the handset, of course, goes beyond its capabilities as an outstanding picture taker, though I'll take it as a given that anyone serious about this handset is equally serious about photography. But there are other considerations. Do you want a Windows Phone? Do you want AT&T as your wireless carrier, since it is the exclusive U.S. provider of the Lumia? At $299.99 with a two-year contract, these are not inexpensive decisions. The phone becomes available Friday.

As with other Windows Phones, you'll see an interface built around live tiles, similar to the screens that decorate Windows 8 PCs. Microsoft now claims more than 165,000 apps for the Windows Phone platform and while that total still trails the number of apps available for iOS and Android devices by a wide margin, it's nothing to sneeze at either. The usual Microsoft connections show up here, too, with Bing search and mobile apps for Office and Xbox.

Nokia places its own stamp on the device, with its own HERE-branded location and mapping apps.

First and foremost, this is a phone for camera geeks, and I'll focus this review on photography. The Lumia 1020 claims a second-generation 41-megapixel sensor with optical image stabilization and, yes, you read that right, "forty-one." Nokia says it uses a camera sensor format that is five times larger than a typical smartphone. But megapixels don't tell the whole story. The camera has six-lens Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and a separate LED flash, a high-resolution 3X optical zoom, and it can shoot 1080p high-definition video. The camera gives you a variety of manual controls to complement its auto-focusing capabilities. There's also a wide-angle front-facing secondary camera at 1.2 megapixels.

Nokia manages to pack all this into a solidly built and handsome 5.6-ounce rectangular slab that comes in yellow, white or black (the version I tested). The phone is about as thin and only slightly taller than the iPhone 5. Unlike most handsets, the back of the 1020 isn't flat - the camera lens juts out slightly, though it didn't bother me.

Nokia puts all those megapixels to good use by capturing two images automatically each time you shoot. One of those is a full-resolution picture that turns out to be either 34 or 38 megapixels, depending on whether you shot it in the 16x9 or 4x3 formats. You also get a very good-quality 5-megapixel image that can be more easily shared via e-mail or message or posted onto a social network.

You can admire images on the camera itself on the Gorilla Glass-protected 4.5-inch AMOLED display - and you can actually make out the screen in direct sunlight, not the case with most other phones. I did notice a few minor scratches on the screen.

Through the supplied Nokia Pro Camera app, you can manually adjust the flash, focus, ISO, shutter speed, white balance and exposure. And you can see the impact that making those changes will have on the final image, before you take the picture. I was also able to take good pictures in dim light. But Nokia also has separate camera apps on the phone, which can get confusing (Camera, Pro Camera, Smart Camera). The Smart Camera app covers special effects, such as removing moving objects in an image.

The extra megapixels let you zoom in on a photo after you've captured it to create a separate image. The quality of the videos was also excellent, even on a moving bus and even when I zoomed in while shooting.

I'd recommend the $79 camera grip accessory that adds a tripod mount and makes the device feel more like a point-and-shoot camera. Microsoft is giving it away as part of a promotion in its online stores when you pre-order the 1020. Added bonus: The grip recharges the battery.

Speaking of the battery, Nokia says you'll get just over 13 hours of talk time and about 16 days of standby.

I do have concerns. It takes a few seconds to save a picture after you've pressed the shutter button. The phone comes with 32 gigabytes of internal memory, but there's no card slot for expanding that memory. Anyone who takes an abundance of pictures -and, yes, that is precisely the person who will find such a phone appealing - will have to factor that in when they're out and about shooting, since avid photographers could use that up in a hurry.

Nokia says that although the highest-resolution pictures will go up to 38 megapixels in quality, they eat up only 8 megabytes in storage. For a limited time, the phone comes with 50 GB of free online storage through the digital AT&T Locker. You get additional online storage through Microsoft SkyDrive.

Despite my quibbles, this is a very smart camera. About as good as you can get on a smartphone.